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How does one explain how incredibly bad YouTube recommendations are? If I go to YouTube and just look for something interesting to watch, I have to scroll past dozens and dozens of videos to find something interesting. The most baffling thing is that it can't figure out that if it shows me a video every time I go to YouTube and I always scroll past it and don't click on anything until it has shown me about 40 videos, I probably don't want to watch that video and it shouldn't show it to me 20 times before giving up.
It also seems to have a long memory and a short memory for the wrong things. If I watch one video from a particular channel, it will suggest videos from that channel every day for a few weeks even if I never watch any more. But if I watch a lot of videos on a particular subject, if I stop watching them for a few weeks, it will completely forget that I was interested in that and never show me one of those videos again. It should be the exact opposite. If I just watch one video about something and don't keep watching more videos that it suggests on the same subject, it should assume I'm not that interested in it or was only interested in that particular video. But if I watch a lot of videos on a subject, it should assume I will be somewhat interested in that subject for the long term, even if I go a week without watching one of them.
Another thing it struggles with is it seems to put too much weight on the channel the video is hosted on and not enough on the actual content. If I watch a video because I am interested in the interviewee, it will keep recommending videos with the same interviewer, but it won't recommend other videos with the interviewee.
The other thing is that it clearly grouping certain channels into clusters and cannot figure out that I actually really dislike certain types of videos in that cluster. So like if it clusters videos about Alice and Bob together because people who like one tend to like the other, if I watch a video about Alice, it will immediately start suggesting videos about Bob, even if I never watch a Bob video. It cannot figure out that I am in some way different from other people who like this cluster of videos.
I actually like this feature. I watch different categories of videos ranging from various debates and podcasts, gaming videos, historical videos and documentaries, videos about technology from solar to new weapons and I also follow some channels due to them being entertaining or just cute to clean the palate with something wholesome such as some animal stuff. I often think something may be interesting but not right now as I am interested in different topic at the moment. But I like it if it remains in the feed for some time - even for a day or two - as I can return to it.
On the other hand I do use "not interested" feature for content I do not find interesting which helps. I am also blocking/unsubscribing whole channels a lot if the algorithm thinks for some reason that I should watch the content even if I find it uninteresting. One example is that I do watch League of Legends content from one youtuber/streamer when I am chilling in the evening or drinking my coffee as he has soothing voice and it helps me vent off stress. Of course as soon as I subscribed to his content and watched a few of his videos, I was slammed by other League content that I am not at all interested in. It took me weeks of religious blocking of random League stuff until the algorithm realized that no, I do not want to watch anything else from that category.
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At a guess, shoving in 400k/4M view videos increases watch time overall, because most people do want them - but people hre tend to not want them?
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I think youtube wants to drastically reduce the amount of niche content they host and broadcast, so they're always recommending stuff from only the channels they want to keep, even if it's not what people want to watch.
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